


Bad Things Happen Bingo: CR Edition

by VoidGhost



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, F/F, F/M, Force-Feeding, Gore, Horror, Implied Cannibalism, Lots of Angst, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:00:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29036607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoidGhost/pseuds/VoidGhost
Summary: An anthology of angsty shortfics based off my Bad Things Happen bingo card on tumblr! Tags are added as chapters are posted. If you want to see my card, visit my tumblr @ wraithfromthevoid.1. Amputation2. Force Feeding
Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Fjord, Jester Lavorre & Beauregard Lionett, The Mighty Nein & Other(s)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	1. Amputation

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt! These will be pretty short as I just want to keep these as drabbles. I intend to hopefully write more often and this is a stepping stone.
> 
> this can be read as Beaujester, but it can also be platonic!

It’s the silence, mostly.

They were used to chatter, the constant noise of  _ something _ , whether it be laughter or singing or joking or teasing. There was always something. But the silence was somehow louder. 

The swamp’s humidity couldn’t compare to the thick air of anger and hurt that pervaded them. The bitch’s hut was only so far ahead now and she was about to deal with a storm. 

In the middle of them was Jester. Her eyes were hard, cold, and pointed ahead, her lips in a gross grimace. She’d been crying again. To Beau, it felt like she never stopped.

Honestly, she expected Jester to bounce back quick. To brush the whole thing off as no big deal, they’ll deal with it, they’ll find a way around it. But no; it was like this truly broke her. Suddenly she was torn open and raw and unable to hide it from them. 

Her hands (or, what was left of them) had been re-bandaged this morning. They were tucked in Veth’s winter coat, the only thing small enough that they had on hand. Her skin was a paler blue than usual. 

Beau hated it. Hated the situation, hated Jester’s pain, hated the witch, hated how  _ naive  _ they were to think that they could handle this when it caught up to them. 

Hated  _ witnessing  _ it.

Beau can’t even remember what they had been doing. She only knew it was their first night back at the Xhorhouse and everyone was still settling in. It was only the two of them, chatting about nothing, and Jester was expressing with her hands, when suddenly she flinched, and her eyes went wide, and she froze mid-sentence, and Beau saw the thin lines of red at her wrists, but before either of them really even knew what had happened, Jester’s two calloused, clawed, thin, skilled hands fell from their proper place and landed with a  _ thud  _ on the wooden floor. 

Beau couldn’t even process what she had seen until Jester let out a painful, terrifying scream, and then Beau was shouting for Caduceus, and there was  _ so much blood _ . She had torn off her shirt to stem the flow until Caduceus could land a healing spell, but even then it soaked through within seconds and quickly formed a puddle. 

When Jester passed out, Beau was relieved. That gave them time to burn their bloody clothes and come up with a plan. 

Oh, and what a plan it was. To confront the witch and….do something. Kill her? Demand she fix Jester’s hands?  _ If  _ she can do that. They haven’t discussed it past ‘find the bitch’, and Beau doesn’t know how to bring it up again. 

Before they got closer to the hut, Caduceus put a hand on Jester’s shoulder. 

“We should switch the bandages,” He said. 

“Should I put up the dome?” Caleb suggested. 

“No,” Jester said, her voice too soft and too croaked. “It’ll be quick.”

They still formed a protective circle around their clerics, just to make sure no creatures sneak up on them. Beau kept an eye on Jester. 

Caduceus unwrapped Veth’s coat and revealed the two bandaged stumps at the ends of Jester’s arms. It still shocked her to see it. It was wrong, to see Jester without two of her essential tools. She used those hands for  _ so much. _

The bandages were soaking through. It came away with thick clots and stuck to the raw edge. New beads of blood burst through as scabs were ripped away. That was something they noticed as time went on; the healing spells never stuck. It remained raw and bloody without ever truly healing. Isharnai’s doing, no doubt.

It was painful, too. Beau could see Jester squeeze her eyes shut and bite her lip as Caduceus re-wrapped her wrists. A whimper involuntarily escaped. 

Beau couldn’t take it. 

“Jester—“

“Let’s go.”

Jester spun on her heel and lead the way further into the swamp. Beau watched her go, watched the others give her silent looks that said a lot, saw the pain they all shared, and wished, desperately, that she could’ve given her offer to the witch, because her own pain would be so much easier to handle. 


	2. Force Feeding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After separating from his party, Caduceus finds himself in the caring hands of a maiden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **READ THE TAGS**
> 
> This one is def more fucked up....idk why i can just write gore rn???? Is this the only thing to break my writer’s block?? Ig so

The teacake was salty. 

It wasn’t bad, really. It certainly looked like a sweet from one of those bakeries Jester likes. It had bits of dried fruit and a crispy, warm top, but the moment Caduceus popped it in his mouth, it dried his tongue with the amount of salt in it. When he chewed the fruit, it burst in a fresh wave of bitterness. 

He quickly washed it down with the tea. 

“I hope everything is to your taste.”

The maiden set another tray of pastries on the table. Their glaze glistened in the soft sunlight filtering in the cottage. Caduceus forwent the teacakes and selected a puff pastry with a red, fruity filling. The delicate buttery layers melted in his mouth as he bit down, the sweet glaze perfectly complimenting the slightly bitter raspberry jam. As he hummed appreciatively, the maiden refilled his teacup. 

He thought about saving a few pastries to bring back with him. Jester would certainly enjoy these. He reached to his hip to find his pouch - he had a few spare cheese cloths he brought from home - but found it missing. He looked down to his side, then to his other side, and the back of the chair he was sitting in. Caduceus realized abruptly that he was completely bare of weapons and his possessions - and a creeping feeling of dread began to sink in. 

“Are the pastries not to your liking?”

Caduceus looked up at the maiden. She picked up the empty plates from the table - how many did he eat? - and the empty teacups. She set them in a sink full of warm water before pulling a hot tray out of the oven. 

“I have muffins ready, if you’d like those instead.”

As she set the muffins on a decorative plate, Caduceus noticed for the first time that he couldn’t tell what she looked like. He knew she was a woman, and that she was human, but every time he saw a physical feature it disappeared from his mind. He couldn’t even recall her name, although he was sure she gave it once before. 

“Forgive me,” Caduceus began, and coughed as his throat stuck. “What was your name again?”

The maiden giggled, like he told a joke, and turned away, dumping the tray in the basin. He watched as she put a kettle on the stove and returned to a bowl on the counter. She gave it a stir, then pulled the wooden spoon out, covered in a thick batter, and licked it. She hummed and dipped it back in. 

The dread in his stomach felt like a lead ball. Something was wrong here. He had gaps in his memory. Where was everyone else?

“How did I get here?”

The maiden turned to him. Even though he still saw her features one at a time, like puzzle pieces he couldn’t put together, he knew she was smiling. 

“Drink your tea.”

Caduceus looked down at his teacup. It was an unfamiliar ceramic cup, with little flowers painted along the sides, and the tea was an unusually saturated green with bits of tea leaves floating in it. He pushed it aside. 

Compelled, he reached forward for a muffin. It was still warm in his hand and still looked like a muffin. It smelled divine. The smell alone made a bit of the anxiety in him relax. He pressed it to his tongue and bit down. 

And immediately gagged as a liquid filled his mouth. He spit the chunk of muffin out. It landed on the yellow tablecloth amidst a spray of red. Caduceus wiped his mouth and saw a smear on the back of his hand. 

“Drink your tea.”

Caduceus looked up at the maiden, suddenly standing above him. With the haze leaving his mind, he began to see for the first time: the caring eyes turned sadistic, the friendly smile turned fanged grin, all hiding behind a changing illusion. 

He made a move to stand, but the maiden gripped his shoulder and pushed him back down. One hand - suddenly much longer, paler, with long claws, gripped his chin. Caduceus attempted to break free, but he wasn’t the strong one, never the strong one. 

The maiden’s - the creature’s - finger pried his mouth open as it’s other hand picked up a discarded teacake, and now Caduceus saw how it wasn’t berries within it, but something that dripped with a viscous red fluid. He was unable to stop the creature as it forced the whole teacake within his mouth. 

Once he felt it on his tongue, the creature snapped his mouth closed and held it. Caduceus tasted the salt, the bitterness from before, and suddenly recognized it as what it was; raw meat, still bloody, and slimy within his mouth as he was unable to spit it out. He gagged as it slipped down his throat, even as more blood filled his mouth, as the illusions finally fell away. 

The maiden was never a maiden. What stood in her place was a tall, grey-skinned creature, with old wrinkles and saggy skin and calloused knuckles and liver spots and warts. The apron she wore was stained in old and new gore. The warm cottage was replaced with an old cabin, fit with broken floorboards and stained countertops, and the  _ smell.  _ Caduceus can’t imagine how he was ever fooled when the whole place reeked of sour, rotten meat. 

Every surface was covered. All of the bakery goods were now chopped and torn and mashed meat and organs, and Caduceus doesn’t want to think of their origins. 

Before the vampire could feed him anything else, an explosion knocked the door off the hinges. Yasha charged in first, veins bulging and a battle cry on her lips, barely processing the scene before targeting the vampire. 

The creature screeched, releasing Caduceus as large wings unfolded from its back. 

Everything went fast after that. The rest of the Nein engaged with the vampire as Fjord crept in. He took Caduceus by the arm and led him out of the cabin, away from that awful scene. 

The moment they stepped off the gravel path and into thick grass, Caduceus collapsed to his knees and retched. 

“Caduceus,” Fjord was saying, a steady hand on his back. “What—what happened? What did she do?”

Caduceus didn’t answer. Instead, he reached two fingers to the back of his throat and vomited. 

The grass became drenched with a mess of chewed bits of flesh and gore. Blood painted them red. Caduceus must have been under a tough enchantment, because none of it tasted the way it went down. The tears blossoming in his eyes thankfully blurred the sight. 

After the fourth time sticking fingers down his throat and only spitting up a mouthful of stomach acid and blood, Fjord pulled him up. 

“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” He said. He pushed a water skin into Caduceus’ hands. 

Caduceus took a swig and spit it into the grass. Then he took another, genuine drink, and kept drinking, and thought about how the blood felt similar to water in his mouth, and tried not to throw up again. 

When he finally shoved the water skin back to Fjord, he wrapped his arms around himself and closed his eyes. He was prepared for something - an  _ I’m sorry _ ,  _ we shouldn’t have split up _ , or  _ That was fucked up _ , or just an awkward silence as the truth of what happened sunk in, and Fjord didn’t know how to approach it. He wouldn’t expect outright rejection; Caduceus could hope none of them would look at him differently, but he knew it would always linger in the back of their minds, just like it will in his. 

What he wasn’t expecting was for Fjord’s arms to slither around his thin waist, for him to lay his head on the hollow place where his neck met shoulder. He wasn’t expecting Fjord to shake. 

Slowly, Caduceus allowed himself to sink into the embrace, to let Fjord hold him, as he craned his neck to bury his face into Fjord’s hair. 

He closed his eyes. 


End file.
